Summary: The Santini-Burton Act, enacted in 1980, authorized the sale of about 7,000 acres of federal lands within Clark County, Nevada, to allow more orderly development of the communities there. The federal lands were owned by the Bureau of Land Management. The act also required the bulk of the proceeds from the land sales to be used for a buyout program in which the government would purchase environmentally sensitive private lands around Lake Tahoe in an effort to stem further degradation of the lake. Concerns have been raised about whether property owners in the Lake Tahoe Basin have been treated fairly when the lands were acquired under the act. This report determines the extent to which (1) the Forest Service acquired lands within the basin under the act's buyout program, (2) the classification of lands within the basin as environmentally sensitive may have harmed their value, and (3) the Forest Service's acquisition of environmentally sensitive land in the basin may have involved the federal government taking private property under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
